Saccharomyces species assignment by long range ribotyping.

Type strains of 10 genotypically distinct Saccharomyces species are differentiated by ribosomal DNA restriction fragment analysis (ribotyping). The full length of the chromosomal ribosomal repeat was amplified in two parts, the 18SrDNA including both ITS region (2600 bp) and the 25SrDNA (3300 bp). Restriction fragments generated by 9 enzymes from these two products yield characteristic patterns, by which unknown Saccharomyces isolates are assigned to the type strains. For convenient separation and detection only fragments longer than 200 bp were monitored. In contrast to molecular differentiation methods of highest resolution as RAPD-PCR or fingerprinting, the results from ribotyping are absolutely reproducible and thereby suitable for databases. The phylogeny computed from the discrete character matrix for presence/absence of fragments by the PHYLIP program package is in complete accordance to the phylogeny derived from ribosomal RNA sequence analysis. By this the field of application of the long range ribotyping can be regarded basically as equal to DNA sequence analysis of the same locus. Because distant relationships are recognized, misidentified genera were detected upon the species assignment. This cannot be done by methods of higher resolution like RAPD-PCR or fingerprinting.